TGA Lesson Plan:

American Suburbia

Created by: Michael Robinson Houston High School, Germantown, TN
Grade Level: 11th / Course Title: U.S. History and Geography
State Standard(s) / US. 82 - Analyze the impact of prosperity and consumerism in the 1950’s, including the growth of white-collar jobs, the suburban ideal...
Time Required / One 45-55 Minute Class Period
Slide
Number(s) / Lesson Outline
1-4 / Introduction to the lesson with Tennessee Standards and connections to Common Core.
5 / Discuss with students the following questions:
1. What do you think of when someone is talking about a large American city?
2. What does the city look like? How is it different from where you live?
3. What did the city look like 100 years ago?
4. How have our cities changed over the past 50 years?
5. Where do many Americans live today? (suburbia)
6 / Option 1 - Print out this slide and have students diagram how American cities have changed in form since the 1800’s when people walked to their destinations to the importance of the automobile in cities since after World War II.
7-8 / Option 2 - Print out slides 7 and 8 and have students diagram and describe the changing form of the American city.
9-14 / Answers to the diagram.
15-19 / Discuss how American cities have become very uniform and look very similar to one another - especially the suburban areas. The geographic term for this would be placelessness- where a place looks similar to another place with no discerning characteristics.
20-45 / Describe how Memphis changes in form when moving from downtown east to the suburban city of Germantown. Ask students to find examples of placelessness as you move through the slides...big box stores, traffic patterns, suburban layouts, mega-churches, etc.
46 / Ask students to describe a suburb. What do most suburbs have in common? Discuss with students many words which now exist to describe suburban areas.
47-54 / Have students match the words with the pictures and their definitions.
55-56 / Have students work individually or in groups to match up the definitions and pictures with the correct terms.
Have students write out the 16 choices on slide 56 or print out slide 56 for students to write their answers on.
57-72 / Move through the slides as students attempt to match up the images with the correct term.
73-78 / After students have tried to match up the terms with the pictures, provide the students with the definitions that correspond with each of the pictures. This should help students with correctly matching the word with the pictures and definitions.
79-98 / Answers to the 16 terms.
99 / Optional Student Assignment Using Google Maps.